9-9-2016 Wigley, Roland ~ Oral History Interview Joshua Wrigley Follow this and additional works at: https://www.st.nmfs.noaa.gov/humandimensions/voices-from-the-fisheries/index Recommended Citation Wigley, Roland. Interview by Joshua Wrigley. Voices from the Science Centers. Voices from the Fisheries, NMFS, NOAA. 9 September 2016. This oral history was produced in 2016 as part of the Voices from the Science Centers Oral History Initiative conducted by Voices from the Fisheries with funding by the NMFS Office of Science and Technology. Voices from the Fisheries 166 Water Street Woods Hole, MA 02543 1 Interview with Roland Wigley by Josh Wrigley Summary Sheet and Transcript Interviewee Wigley, Roland Interviewer Wrigley, Joshua Date September 9, 2016 Place Falmouth, Massachusetts ID Number VFF_WH_RW_001 Use Restrictions This interview transcript is provided for individual research purposes only; for all other uses, including publication, reproduction and quotation beyond fair use, permission must be obtained in writing from: Voices from the Fisheries, NMFS, 15 Carlson Lane, Falmouth, MA 02540. Biographical Note Roland Wigley was born in 1923 in New Jersey. He studied at the University of Maine at Orono, where his college career was interrupted by World War II. He served in the Army Air Corps during the war. He returned to the University of Maine after the war and received his Ph.D. from Cornell University, where he did a dissertation on the life history of the sea lamprey of Cayuga Lake. He began working for the U.S. Bureau of Commercial Fisheries as student in 1949 and was hired in a permanent capacity in 1954. His first research project was the haddock food study. He participated in many surveys on the Albatross III and was Head of Benthic Investigation. Scope and Content Note Interview contains discussions of: U.S. Bureau of Commercial Fisheries, storms, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute, Rachel Carson, Albatross III, fish tagging, sargassum, pycnogonids, Woods Hole League, relationship between Bureau of Commercial Fisheries, WHOI and MBL, haddock food study, benthic studies, Marine Flora & Fauna of the Northeast United States, the Woods Hole scientific community and the red crab survey. Roland Wigley discusses the early days of the U.S. Bureau of Commercial Fisheries in 1949, a voyage with Rachael Carson, work with various professionals at the Bureau in 1954 and the remainder of his career. He shares the details of a near-fatal storm in 1955; WHOI history and 2 connections; innovations in research; includes many names in the field in Canada, U.S., and Aberdeen, Scotland. NOTE: Transcript starts in mid-story. Details of interview are given at end. Indexed Names Ayers, John Ballard, Robert Barnard, J. Laurens Bigelow, Henry B. Bousfield, E. L. Buller, Raymond Carricker, Melbourne Carson, Rachel Colton, Jack Drye, Frank Edwards, Robert Emery, K. O. Gendron, Rodolphe Graham,Herbert Ike, Roberta Lux, Fred McCauley, Franklin McIntyre, Alistair Miles, Ernie Plough, Harold H. Raney, Ed Robbins, Tim Rodell, Marie Royce, Bill Sanders, Howard Schroeder, William C. Shearer, Frank Shuck, Howard Sked, Ogden Smith, Keith Smith, Ralph Smith, Sidney Theroux, Roger Verrill, Dr. Addison Webster,Dwight Walsh, John (Jack) Welch, Lee Welch, John (―Red‖) Zullo, Victor 3 Transcript: RW: -- he crawled over to the telegraph and what he did, he speeded it up and that brought it [the vessel] up. JW: And that righted the ship? RW: [laughs] It hesitated for a while. But we were penned up. You couldn’t get outside…a raging storm. The life boat was all we had back in those days and that blew off at about 60 or 70 miles an hour. There were little caps on the gyros. They all disappeared. But the main thing was that we had two big steel doors leading to the…what we called the lazarette. It was just a storage room about half the size of this room. That’s where we had all our samples. [laughs] Big planks and everything in there. First of all, the doors were washed off. The waves washed everything out of that room. The only thing left was a little scum around where the bulkhead met the deck. We had sediment samples and some of the sediments were clay. And it was the clay that collected around there and then small fragments of glass. JW: That was all that was left? RW: That’s all. JW: Everything else was washed out? RW: It was all clean. There had been big beams and big planks and all our samples. JW: What do you think the wave height was during that storm? RW: Oh, it was terrible. You know, the Daytona sank? That was just up behind us. JW: Really? What ship was that? RW: That was a cargo ship, 300 and some feet. It was full of gypsum heading from Nova Scotia to Philadelphia. Twenty-three people in the crew all died. Oh, that was a crime. But, I know they had the Texas Tower that was still [intact], it was a missile silo. You probably don’t even remember it. JW: What was that? RW: It was a missile silo of radar. A big one. Three big legs and they got over 80 mile[per hour winds]. See, that was quite a ways from us. We had started down along the southwest margin of Georges Bank and we were working east and that’s when the storm hit us. I took the weather[forecast]. There was weather for mariners or something like that. At 6:20 in the morning, 6:20 at night, and I wrote it all down and I kept all of those[records]. We used to also take a BT cast[at each station]. I don’t know– 4 JW: What does that stand for? RW: That’s a bathythermograph. It was our high-tech equipment that would take the[water] temperature from the surface to the bottom. We thought it was great. We put a new smoked slide on it each time. Well, we had a log for that among which was the anemometer reading.[The anemometer blew away at 92 mph]. [laughs] So, when we came back, I had all these anemometer readings that we actually took and then I had all these forecasts that the weather people[gave out], they were so far off, it was sickening. [laughs] They never– JW: Had they mis-predicted the path of the storm? RW: Nobody knew about the storm[not even the Weather Bureau]. JW: Oh, at all? RW: No. JW: Why not? RW: In fact, they sent a 110-foot tugboat from Provincetown to the Texas Tower. JW: Where was the Texas Tower located? RW: That was up on the Cultivator Shoals. That’s the northwest corner[of Georges Bank]. Very shallow up there. That’s why it was there. Well, this tug, the storm was so bad, they couldn’t even get anywhere near there. You wouldn’t believe this, I didn’t believe it, there were 50 people stationed on that Texas Tower and there were 36 visitors. [laughs] JW: During the storm? RW: Well, they were there before the storm. JW: I guess there was no way to exit there. RW: They didn’t have any more information than we had, as far as I knew, so they figured it was normal weather. Well, when the tug got about halfway there, they had to turn around and come back and said "there’s no way we can get to the Texas Tower." They got winds up over 80 miles an hour and they had a 61-foot wave that they measured somehow. We heard that there were a number of fishing boats went down, but we didn’t have the names or what kind of boats they were. Anyhow, it was a wicked storm and even our fisheries people didn’t know. Here, our vessel was stripped and [laughs] we came limping in. I remember, of course, the power steering went out early and the captain had to pick two of the youngest people. The waves were coming from two directions and they had to steer manually. It was a big wheel[on the bridge]. Oh, they had a time. They were young people. JW: How difficult was that to manage manually? 5 RW: It was tough. That’s why they had to pick young guys. JW: So, one on either side trying to wrestle the wheel? RW: Oh no, they took turns, one at a time[an hour at a time for 10 or 15 hours]. [laughs] It took a lot of strength. Those young guys, they were both in very good shape. Two fishermen. Two of the youngest fishermen. Lee Welch and…who is the other fellow? I’ve forgotten his name. JW: Who was captain of the ship on that voyage? RW: That was Gendron. Captain Gendron. I wrote an article that the [Falmouth]Enterprise[Newspaper] published here in later years, four or five years ago. For some reason or other, they left off the names of the people that were out there. It was my first assignment as Chief Scientist. [laughs] JW: Really? That’s the way to get your start. [laughs] RW: Well, I had been out on the Albatross III every cruise in 1949,I was assigned. Bill Royce was [the] Director. I applied for a summer job. I thought it’d be at the lab. He said, "Yes, but you will be assigned to the Albatross[III]. You have to make every cruise.‖ So, there were two of us. Who was the other fellow? A fellow from Rhode Island. We had a wonderful time.